"Something on the starboard bow." The voice of the look-out man came to his ears.
"It's a boat, an open boat," cried the sub., after a careful inspection, "and it's pretty full, by Jove!"
A curt order, and the T.B.D. swung round and tore down on the little speck bobbing in the water. And they were still a few hundred yards away when a look of dawning horror strangely mixed with joy spread over Jerry's face. His glass was fixed on the boat, and who in God's name was the woman—impossible, of course—but surely.... If it wasn't her it was her twin sister; his hand holding the glass trembled with eagerness, and then at last he knew. The woman standing up in the stern of the boat was Maisie, and as he got nearer he saw there was a look on her face which made him catch his breath sharply.
"Great God!" The sub's voice roused him. "What have they been doing?" No need to ask whom he meant by "they." "The boat is a shambles."
The destroyer slowed down, and from the crew who looked into that little open boat came dreadful curses. It ran with blood; and at the bottom women and children moaned feebly, while an elderly man contorted with pain in the stern, writhed and sobbed in agony. And over this black scene the eyes of the man and the woman met.
"Carefully, carefully, lads," Travers sang out. This was no time for questions, only the poor torn fragments counted. Afterwards, perhaps. Very tenderly the sailors lifted out the bodies, and one of them—a little girl in his arms, with a dreadful wound in her head—jabbered like a maniac with the fury of his rage. And so after many days they again came face to face.
"Are you wounded?" he whispered.
"No." Her voice was hard and strained; she was near the breaking point. "They sunk us without warning—the Lucania—and then shelled us in the open boats."
"Dear heavens!" Jerry's voice was shaking. "Ah! but you're not hurt, my lady; they didn't hit you?"
"My mother was drowned, and my father too." She was swaying a little. "It was the U 99."